2. Quickstart Tutorial

If you have not completed the above two steps, see System Requirements for more information about what you need.

Now you are ready to record some sound. Click the Record button on the toolbar, or press Ctrl-Space to start a recording. During the recording keep an eye on the Input Volume control and make adjustments if the input level is too quiet or too loud.

Make some sounds. For example, sing the vowel ‘Ah’ for one breath on the same pitch. You could also click on a key of the piano keyboard, listen to it, and then try to sing the same pitch. Fill up half a screen and then press Space or click the Stop button to stop recording. This should look something like this:

Figure 2.5. Singing a tone on the same pitch for one breath

The Timeline at the bottom shows the intensity (or volume) of your sound. The horizontal blue line in the middle is the pitch of your voice. The vertical green line is the Time Cursor. The Piano highlights the key that best matches the pitch of the recording at the time where the Time Cursor is, and the Staff View shows the same key as a musical note.

To make this tutorial easier to follow, you can load the same audio file that was used to make the screenshots shown here, so that you will see exactly the same screens. Click on Help → Open sample file and select the file “vibrato_female.ogg”.

After you have opened the file, click on the profile list and select the profile “Standard Time Zoom” to ensure your view matches the following screenshots.

Notice how the blue line is not straight, but is slightly moving up and down. This is due to the vibrato of the singing voice. Let’s examine this a bit more closely. Move the mouse over the Frequency Scale (as shown in Figure 2.6) and rotate the scroll wheel of your mouse, or experiment with pressing the 1 and 2 buttons on your keyboard. This will zoom the frequency range in or out. Once you have zoomed in a bit, click on the Frequency Scale and drag it up or down with your mouse. This will scroll it. Zoom and scroll the frequency range until you see much more detail of the pitch line.

Figure 2.6. Using the mouse on the scales for scrolling and zooming

Now use your mouse on the Time Scale (also shown in Figure 2.6) and zoom into time a bit. So now you have zoomed the frequency range, and the time range, to show more detail on both scales. Your screen should now look similar to this:

Figure 2.7. Zoomed-in detail of pitch

Notice how the Time Range Slider in Figure 2.7 is now much smaller than in the previous image, because the time range has been zoomed-in. You can drag the Time Range Slider with the mouse when you grab it in its middle, where the mouse cursor will change into a hand. Try this now. Or you can simply click anywhere on the Timeline to bring the Time Range Slider to that position.

We have already observed that the pitch line moves up and down. Now, with the detailed close-up, let’s analyze the range of this pitch movement. Click on the Show Spectrum button (as shown on Figure 2.8) to bring up the Short-Term view:

Figure 2.8. Click “Spectrum” button to bring up secondary view

Now the Analyzer View is split into two parts. On the left side is the long-term view, and on the right is the short-term view:

Figure 2.9. Long-term and short-term view

The two views are linked. If you move the mouse cursor over the long-term view on the left side, the short-term view on the right side will show a detailed close-up for the time at which you point. Right now we are displaying only pitch, so the short-term view shows a blue line with the exact pitch of the cursor location, and it displays the note name of this pitch in large letters.

Trace the pitch line on the left with the mouse cursor, and notice how the pitch display on the right changes. If the mouse cursor leaves the Long-term view, the short-term view will display details for the time location of the green Time Cursor line.

In this recording, the singer is singing the note C#. Press the black C# key on the piano (highlighted in red in Figure 2.10), to hear the note from the piano. Now press the Play button on the toolbar, or press Space on your keyboard, to play back the recording. Listen to it and hear for yourself if the singer is singing in tune with the piano key.

Now let’s select a part of the recording. Stop playback by pressing Space or by clicking on the Stop button on the toolbar. Now click on View → Zoom out fully to show the entire recording. Now click into the Analyzer View at the time position of 1.0 seconds and drag the mouse towards the time position of 3.0 seconds. Clicking and dragging in the Analyzer View will make a new selection which is marked by a white frame and a different background color. You can click and drag the borders of the selection to change its start and end position. Do this until you have selected the time range 1.0 to 3.0 seconds. This should look like this:

Figure 2.10. Select time range 1.0 to 3.0 seconds

Now start playback again. Notice how the selected time range is now played in a loop. You can switch looping on or off by clicking on Tools → Loop playback. If looping is turned off, pressing Space will play the selection just once, until you press it again.

If you click anywhere on the Timeline or the Analyzer View, the selection will disappear. If you want to keep a selection and be able to click into it during playback to hear specific parts, you can lock the selection by clicking on Edit → Lock selection or by clicking on the Lock selection button on the toolbar. Try this now. Make a selection, lock it, start playback, and then click at various points in time. Don’t forget to unlock the selection when you are done with it.

So far we’ve only looked at the pitch line, which shows the fundamental pitch of the recording. Now let’s look at the Spectrogram, which shows how loud the recording is at each point of the frequency range. Click on Tools → Options or press the Options button on the toolbar to bring up the Options dialog, then click on “Analyzer View” on the left side to select the Analyzer View settings page:

Figure 2.11. Analyzer View Settings

Check the Spectrogram and Spectrum options on the settings page so that it looks exactly like Figure 2.11. Then press on the OK button to close the settings page.

Now you should already see the Spectrogram and the Spectrum, but the screen might still be zoomed in very far from the previous step. On the toolbar, click on the Select Profile button and select the “Standard Frequency Range” profile. Then click on View → Zoom out fully. Now your screen should look similar to this:

Figure 2.12. Displaying Spectrogram and Spectrum

Figure 2.12 once again shows the long-term and short-term views, but now they contain not only the pitch line, but also the Spectrogram (in the long-term view on the left side) and the Spectrum (in the short-term view on the right). You can adjust the amount of detail of Spectrogram and Spectrum by changing the brightness and contrast sliders on the toolbar (as shown on Figure 2.3).

The Spectrum and Spectrogram show the intensity (or volume) of the individual frequency components of a sound. To better understand what this means, let’s use another feature of VoceVista Video: the Frequency Filter.

If you still have the selection from the previous steps, great. Otherwise, once again select the time range from 1 to 3 seconds, and lock the selection by clicking on Edit → Lock selection or by pressing the Lock selection toolbar button. Position the Time Cursor line in the middle by clicking into the long-term view at 2.0 seconds.

Now click on Filters → Add new frequency filter. Your screen should now look like this:

Figure 2.13. Adding a Frequency Filter

The grey frame between 200 and 400 Hertz is the Frequency Filter. It will remove all frequencies outside of its range. Enable looping. Start playback again and hear the effect of the filter. Then, while playback is running, move the filter up and down by dragging it with the mouse. The Spectrum on the right will show a white outline of the filtered parts, while the unfiltered (and therefore audible) part is shown in color. You can change the width of the filter by dragging the red handles that appear when the mouse cursor hovers over the filter.

Now click on Filters → Mute filtered frequencies to invert the filter. Instead of keeping only the frequencies inside of it, it now punches a hole in the spectrum by filtering out the frequencies inside of it. To see this more clearly, set the brightness slider on the toolbar to -10 dB, and set the contrast slider to 40 dB. Drag the Frequency Filter to cover the range from 400 to 700 Hz, so that it removes the second harmonic in the recording:

Figure 2.14. Subtractive Frequency Filter

Notice in Figure 2.14 how the Spectrum shows an outline of the second harmonic, while the other harmonics are in color. Once again, start playback, and move the filter up and down to hear its effect.

To remove the filter, click on the box on its top right corner.

The Frequency Filter enables you to listen to the individual harmonics (or overtones) in a recording, and the Overtone Slider is a tool that allows you to easily count the overtones and to see which note or frequency they correspond to. Make sure that you still have a selection. Then click on Sliders → Insert note slider at selection. A slider will appear at the fundamental pitch of the selected range.

Use the mouse to point at the slider, and drag up the red upwards-pointing triangle to expand the number of overtones shown:

Figure 2.15. Adjusting the number of harmonics shown by the Overtone Slider

You can scroll down the Frequency Scale and zoom it slightly until you see enough detail of the Overtone Slider. The slider gives you a theoretical view of the overtones that belong to a particular sound. The labels of the slider lines show the number of the harmonic, its music note, and its frequency. The underlying Spectrogram shows the harmonics that are actually present in the recording. Click on the labels of the Overtone Slider and move the mouse up and down while holding the mouse button to hear the overtone scale belonging to the current fundamental pitch. Compare this to the actual overtones in the sound that you could hear with the Frequency Filter.

This concludes this quickstart guide. You have learned the basics of how to record and visualize sounds with VoceVista Video and had an introduction to the basic features and interface elements of the program. The main steps to remember are:

Next Steps

For a more detailed description of the interface elements introduced here, have a look at the chapter called User Interface in the Reference Guide.